Equanimity for Interpreters and Everyone Else
One of the things people keep asking me about is how to deal with anxiety while interpreting. While part of the answer is surely honing up one’s interpreting skill, another thing I find useful is mindfulness meditation.
I meditated almost daily since September 2015 till early 2018, and recently resumed the practice thanks to a subscriber of this channel. Unexpectedly, I quickly found the practice contributing to my interpreting career. Interestingly, my intuitive finding was later confirmed by the famous interpreter and educator Andrei Falaleyev. In his 6th textbook, Камея (2017) he included some meditation instructions accompanied with explanations why this thing might be worth your time and effort.
My story with mindfulness meditation started from the enthralling and compelling book 10% Happier by Dan Harris, a memoir-like narration of how a TV anchor and reporter started practicing. In late 2017, Dan came up with another book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics (co-authored with Jeff Warren and Carlye Adler), by which he tackles some of the challenges and objections that unnecessarily preclude thousands of people from reaping the benefits of regular practice.
In short, if you can read Russian and would like to check out Falaleyev’s introduction and instructions, drop me a line, and I’ll copy that page for you. If you can’t read Russian, you probably have no idea who is Falaleyev anyway – but I can retell his argument here if you want :)
In any case, here’s Dan Harris sharing his story in Yale. Enjoy watching.
One of the things people keep asking me about is how to deal with anxiety while interpreting. While part of the answer is surely honing up one’s interpreting skill, another thing I find useful is mindfulness meditation.
I meditated almost daily since September 2015 till early 2018, and recently resumed the practice thanks to a subscriber of this channel. Unexpectedly, I quickly found the practice contributing to my interpreting career. Interestingly, my intuitive finding was later confirmed by the famous interpreter and educator Andrei Falaleyev. In his 6th textbook, Камея (2017) he included some meditation instructions accompanied with explanations why this thing might be worth your time and effort.
My story with mindfulness meditation started from the enthralling and compelling book 10% Happier by Dan Harris, a memoir-like narration of how a TV anchor and reporter started practicing. In late 2017, Dan came up with another book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics (co-authored with Jeff Warren and Carlye Adler), by which he tackles some of the challenges and objections that unnecessarily preclude thousands of people from reaping the benefits of regular practice.
In short, if you can read Russian and would like to check out Falaleyev’s introduction and instructions, drop me a line, and I’ll copy that page for you. If you can’t read Russian, you probably have no idea who is Falaleyev anyway – but I can retell his argument here if you want :)
In any case, here’s Dan Harris sharing his story in Yale. Enjoy watching.